Should you get this game? Read our McPixel Review
Lets start this review by asking a question, WTF is McPixel? Well, according to its developer Mr.Sos Sosowski, the game is a "minimalistic point and click adventure”. When you think of point and click-adventure games the first that comes in your mind are those of Lucas Arts like Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango etc, but McPixel isn't like any one of those.
As the dev stated, McPixel is an ultra minimalistic point and click adventure game. The premise here is very simple, you must save the day by preventing a bomb from exploding using available tool from the environment. There was a TV Show in the 90' called MacGuyver where the main guy, secret agent MacGuyver always used random things from the environment to solve the situations. He was so awesome that in one episode he created a frickin' laser using only crystal-tipped rods, ruby set in a gold ball and a mirrored bowl. YES A FRICKIN' LASER!!! So yeah McPixel "borrows" heavily from that, hence the name.
There are a total of 100+ levels in the game and each one is unique. You must prevent the bomb from exploding. How? Well, in a level you can eat the bomb, in another one you have to pee over the fire to put it out and save the spaceship, in another one you have to destroy The Terminator to stop him from self-destructing etc. Everything that stand out from the background is usable. You can interact with these objects and the NPCs and every time the ending result will be different. The most obvious choices are bound to fail so you must think outside the box.You have 20 seconds to "complete" each level. If you diffuse or destroy or... make a snake eat the bomb you get silver medal. But there is also the gold medal and to get it you must do something really silly in the level.
The silliness in McPixel reaches epic new heights. How can you prevent the Death Star from exploding? Or how can you defeat Goku in a fight? Or how can you put out a fire in an alien space ship? Or how can you help Batman save the day? The scenarios that McPixel is thrown in and the references in all the levels are the strongest points here. In the levels you will see and interact with Dr.House, Mario, Ripley, Harry Potter, Goku, The Terminator, Darth Vader, Ash and Dr.Oak and many many other pop culture characters. Please tell me in which game you can find Gordon Freeman and Gabe Newell roasting marshmallows???
Visually the game is in 8-bit style but you can change to different filters that drastically change the looks of the game. The environments and the characters look very cool. The animations are also a strong point of the game as there is a lot of them and which BTW are HILARIOUS! Also the music in the background is very catchy!
Now to answer the most important question, should you buy the game? About two days ago the game was greenlighted and released in Steam for the price of 4,99$, but is it worth it? Sure 100 levels sounds like a lot, but you can go through them and get gold in all of them in like an hour. There is also some free DLC adding like 10 new levels, a mini game and an editor mode. So here you are looking for maybe at most, 2-3 hours of gameplay. Sos is stating that he's going to support the game with new levels and I can't wait to see what the twisted minds of the community will create.The game is out on Steam for PC and Mac but it will be available for Linux, iPhone, iPod, iPad,Android,Blackberry and Commodore 64 in the near future.
For my opinion, McPixel is worth your time and money. You will have a lot of fun and a lot of WTF?! (in a funny sense) moments. McPixel is truly something! Buy the game, you will not be disappointed.
8.5/10-Editor Choice
